Archive for the 'Turnitin' Category

UCL participated in the 2017 Jisc Digital Student Tracker Survey as part of a consortium with the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) made up of SOAS, Birkbeck, LSHTM and RVC. 74 UK institutions ran the tracker with their students collecting 22,593 student responses, while 10 international universities collected an additional 5,000 student responses

We were the only consortium to participate in the survey and had come together as a result of institutional surveys, such as the National Student Survey, meaning that the time available to run it independently was short (a month) and we therefore felt that our individual sample sizes would be too small. We treated the survey as a pilot and advertised a link to it on each College’s Moodle landing page as well as some promotion via social media and the Student Unions. The survey generated 330 responses, which given our constraints was much more than we expected.

The survey comprises five broad areas: Digital access, digital support and digital learning. Most questions were quantitatively recorded, but there were four open questions, which produced qualitative data. We were also able to choose two additional questions to the survey and we selected e-assessment, since that was a previous shared enhancement project (see www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/assessment) and Moodle, since all members of the consortium use the platform for their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Once the survey closed and we had access to the benchmarking report we ran a workshop for representatives from each of the Colleges in July 2017 whereby the results corresponding to the survey’s open questions were analysed in institutional groups, which facilitated interesting discussions over commonalities and potential implications.

Sarah Sherman, the BLE Manager and myself, have been working to produce a report which will examine our collective responses to the survey in comparison with the national survey population with a recommendation that individual Colleges independently analyse their own results in more detail. For confidentiality, each College will be presented with a version of this document, which contains the relevant data for their institution only and not the complete BLE data set. A disadvantage of the consortium approach was that we were not able to benchmark individual Colleges to the survey population as the resources would not allow for this. In the future, the participating Colleges may wish to run the survey individually rather than as part of a collective as it was not possible to conduct deep analysis with this data set.

Although the sample size collected by the Bloomsbury Colleges was small and not statistically viable, there is much we can extract and learn from this exercise. For the most part, our collective responses tended to fall within the margins set by the national survey population, which means we are all at a similar phase in our student’s digital capability and development.

A few months ago we alerted you to the fact that Turnitin will be moving all users to its new grading interface known as Feedback Studio.

At present, users can toggle between using Turnitin’s old interface – TurnitinClassic and its latest version Feedback Studio. From 1st August 2017, all users will have to use Feedback Studio to view originality reports, grade work and provide feedback.

Though a number of you have already moved to using Feedback Studio as it is the default version available on UCL Moodle, some staff have chosen to revert back to the Classic version. In preparation for the switch off of the ‘Classic’ version, we recommend that all Moodle users have a go at using Feedback Studio.

The 2-minute video below is a brief walkthrough of Turnitin Feedback Studio.

Trial Feedback Studio: Please note that not all functionality is enabled on this demo version. You can however enable feedback studio on assignments that you may currently be in the process of marking by clicking on the ‘Try Turnitin feedback Studio’ link located at the top of an open assignment.

From summer 2017 Turnitin will be moving all users to their updated viewing and grading tool, Feedback Studio. Most UCL staff and students are already using Feedback Studio so will not see any change, but if you’re still using the ‘Classic’ version of the tool you will no longer have this option from late July 2017. You’ll still find the functionality you’re used to, but with an updated look and feel.

So what does Feedback Studio offer? For a quick tour of the new features of Feedback Studio, and differences with the ‘Classic’ version, you can watch the short video above from Turnitin. (NB. Multiple markers feature will not be enabled initially, and the section shown 4:00mins+ is not relevant to Turnitin through Moodle.)

Beyond being able to view and navigate similarity reports, it also offers staff a variety of ways to mark – including audio comments, rubrics and saved re-usable comments. Most of this functionality has been available to UCL staff for some time, but Turnitin have been working on the design of their interface.

For instance, selection of the wide variety of tools Turnitin offers is now done by using icons set alongside the paper for easier faster marking. You may also be looking for a ‘Save’ button, but Turnitin now saves your comments as you move between papers using the arrows in the top right of the screen.

This new version also aims to be more accessible, with viewing and grading easier on a greater variety of devices using a responsive design, as well as for those using screen readers and keyboards for navigation.

If you want to try out the new version of Feedback studio, without logging in to Moodle and setting up an assignment, you can explore an interactive demo from Turnitin.

Universities across the UK will soon be making the change as well as UCL, and we had the opportunity to hear from colleagues at the University of Kent, in partnership with Turnitin, at the recent MoodleMoot.ie conference earlier this April. They spoke of their success in moving to online marking in conjunction with the move to the new Feedback Studio, with over 70% overall of all marks now returned online. Key elements in their success were offering guidance for both staff and students (ours can be found here for staff and students), and offering repeated reminders of the change throughout the summer, so that all staff had a chance to be made aware.

If you have any concerns or questions about this change, please consult the guidance, and email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk with any issues.

Elodie Douarin (Lecturer in Economics, UCL School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies) and I have been comparing how assessment criteria can be presented to engage a large cohort of students with feedback in Moodle Assignment and Turnitin Assignment (report now available). We took a mixed methods approach using questionnaire, focus group and student screencasts as they accessed their feedback and responded to our question prompts. Here are some our key findings.

Spoiler – we didn’t get a clear steer over which technology is (currently) better – they have different advantages. Students said Moodle seemed “better-made” (which I take to relate to theming issues rather than software architecture ones) while the tutor appreciated the expanded range of feedback available in Moodle 3.1.

Assessment criteria

Students need an opportunity to discuss, and ideally practice with, the criteria in advance, so that they and the assessors can reach a shared view of the standards by which their work will be assessed.

Students need to know that criteria exist and be supported to use them. Moodle Assignment is good for making rubrics salient, whereas Turnitin requires students to know to click an icon.

Students need support to benchmark their own work to the criteria. Moodle or Turnitin rubrics allow assessors to indicate which levels students have achieved. Moreover, Moodle allows a summary comment for each criterion.

Since students doubt that assessors refer to the criteria during marking, it is important to make the educational case for criteria (i.e. beyond grading) as a way of reaching a shared understanding about standards, for giving and receiving feedback, and for self/peer assessment.

Feedback

The feedback comments most valued by students explain the issue, make links with the assessment criteria, and include advice about what students should do next.

Giving feedback digitally is legible and easily accessible from any web connected device.

Every mode of feedback should be conspicuously communicated to students and suggestions on how to cross-reference these different modes should be provided. Some thoughts should be given to ways to facilitate access to and interpretation of all the elements of feedback provided.

Students need to know that digital feedback exists and how to access it. A slideshow of screenshots would allow tutors to hide and unhide slides depending on which feedback aspects they are using.

Effort

The more feedback is dispersed between different modes, the more effortful it is for students to relate it to their own work and thinking. Where more than one mode is used, there is a need to distinguish between the purpose and content of each kind of feedback, signpost their relationships, and communicate this to students. Turnitin offers some support for cross referencing between bubble comments and criteria.

It would be possible to ask students to indicate on their work which mode (out of a choice of possibilities) they would like assessors to use.

The submission of formative assessment produced with minimal effort may impose a disproportionate burden on markers, who are likely to be commenting on mistakes that students could have corrected easily by themselves. Shorter formative assessment, group works, clearer statements of the benefits of submitting formative work may all help limiting the incidence of low-effort submissions.

If individual summary comments have a lot in common, consider releasing them as general feedback for the cohort, spending the saved time on more student-specific comments instead. However, this needs to be signposted clearly to help students cross-reference with their individual feedback.

As a group, teaching teams can organise a hands-on session with Digital Education to explore Moodle Assignment and Turnitin from the perspectives of students, markers and administrators. This exposure will help immeasurably with designing efficient, considerate processes and workflows.

The kind of ‘community work’ referred to by Bloxham and colleagues (2015) would be an opportunity to reach shared understandings of the roles of students and markers with respect to criteria and feedback, which would in turn help to build confidence in the assessment process.

The 2016 version is a product of merging the UCL Moodle Baseline with the Student Minimum Entitlement to On-Line Support from the Institute of Education.

The Digital Education Advisory team will be distributing printed copies to E-Learning Champions and Teaching Administrators for use in departments.

Please could you also distribute this to your own networks to help us communicate the new guidelines to all staff.

Support is available to help staff apply this to their Moodle course templates via digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

We are also working on a number of ideas to help people understand the baseline (via a myth busting quiz) and a way for people to show their courses are Baseline (or Baseline+) compliant by way with a colleague endorsed badge.

See ‘What’s new?’, to quickly see what has changed since the last 2013 Baseline.